Gun­men free pris­on­ers in south­ern Mali town

Uniden­ti­fied gun­men freed 21 pris­on­ers in the south­ern Mali town of Banamba late on Sun­day in what Mali’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter de­scribed as a “ter­ror­ist at­tack”. Ma­madou Is­mael Konate said yes­ter­day the six at­tack­ers had wanted to re­lease “two ter­ror­ists” but said they had al­ready been moved to an­other town. Konate said one prison guard had gone miss­ing af­ter the raid but he pro­vided no fur­ther de­tails. An army spokesman said the at­tack had oc­curred around 2100 GMT on Sun­day. It was not im­me­di­ately clear who was be­hind the at­tack but Is­lamist groups such as An­sar Dine have stepped up their in­sur­gency in Mali this year, car­ry­ing out more than 60 at­tacks on United Na­tions and other tar­gets since May and spread­ing south into ar­eas pre­vi­ously deemed safe. “I heard gun­shots as I was get­ting ready to go to bed around 2300,” said Banamba res­i­dent Ya­couba Doucoure. “Later I learned there was an at­tack against the army camp and the prison.”